It is an account as intriguing as the disparate parts that make up the world. No Higher Honor, all 700 pages of it, details the American take on issues of international import during President George W. Bush’s two terms. As a Pakistan-specific read, it is a reconfirmation of the suspicion and anger this country generates in a Washington which cannot do without Islamabad.

There is nothing in Condoleezza Rice’s cauldron that would please the general Pakistani taste. Conversely, it has quite a lot to feed the anti-American types who must dismiss all doubts cast by the US on Pakistan as propaganda unworthy of encouraging introspection. It is much more than just suspicion: the Americans claim they knew, even if they took their time acknowledging their facts about 21st-century Pakistan.

Rice retraces her steps through long years as a trusted Bush lieutenant, first as the president’s national security adviser and later, during his second term, as the secretary of state. This turns out to be a whirlwind tour which takes her to the most happening capitals around the globe and has her hosting all kinds of guests, from the more pliable to the most obdurate.

She has her favourites. Of course, President Bush rises above the customary goof-ups to emerge as a worthy global leader. Tony Blair is there as an affectionate friend, who took the plunge even when Bush told him he didn’t really have to commit to the ‘war on terror’. Colin Powell is another friend Rice appears to be comfortable with. It is the relationship with Donald Rumsfeld that finds her in her more difficult moments at the White House.

It had to be 9/11 around which much of Rice’s neatly-told story revolves. Consequently, Pakistan lingers nearby, initially, even if briefly, in the shadows but with time as the most dreaded place on earth, beating Iraq and Afghanistan by miles.

Initially, the Russians appear to be better aware of the threat emanating from Pakistan’s hobnobbing with the extremists. Rice remembers how President Vladimir Putin had informed President Bush and her about Pakistan’s involvement with al Qaeda and Taliban a few months before 9/11. But old impressions about Russians had prevailed, preventing an instant registration of the concerns.

Rice recalls a meeting in 2001: “Putin suddenly raised the problem of Pakistan. He excoriated the Pervez Musharraf regime for its support of extremists and for the connections of the Pakistani army and intelligence services to the Taliban and al-Qaeda… Those extremists were all being funded by Saudi Arabia, he said, and it was only a matter of time until it resulted in a major catastrophe.”

It was obviously shocking for the sole super power to be updated on a serious world affair by the president of Russia. The reader needs a quick assurance and gets one: “We of course knew of the connections between Pakistan and the Taliban,” Rice writes, “and had been hammering Islamabad, as the Clinton administration had, to break its ties with Taliban.”

Still, she was “taken aback by Putin’s alarm and vehemence” and “chalked it up to Russian bitterness toward Pakistan for supporting Afghan mujahideen… Putin, though, was right: the Taliban and al Qaeda were time bombs that would explode on September 11, 2001. Pakistan’s relationship with the extremists would become one of our gravest problems. Putin never let us forget it, recalling the conversation time and again.”

The perspective underwent a correction and while other subjects, such as the Middle East, Latin America, etcetera, are discussed in detail and often with the usual diplomatic restraint, the word Pakistan routinely leads to expressions of utmost distrust, impatience and even contempt. Just after the Mumbai attacks, Rice had to listen to a “long speech” by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani “on how Pakistan fought extremists.” She recalls responding: “Mr Prime Minister, either you are lying to me or your people are lying to you.”

One aspect in Rice’s account that could allow for a bit of happy analysis is when she compares the extremely tense Pakistan-India situation after the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 with the events following the terrorist strike in Mumbai in November 2008. After the parliament attack, the two countries were on the brink of war which was only avoided with some deft but decisive handling. Post-Mumbai, while the Pakistanis were “terrified” even if unable to acknowledge the local links of the Mumbai militants, the Indians did not want a war. Instead, they wanted Pakistan to take some action against the backers of the Mumbai attackers.

Lok Sabha election was due in a few months’ time. If, conventionally, hostility towards Pakistan was regarded as a useful plank for garnering votes, the Congress government did not see merit in promoting war hysteria for electoral gains in this case.

What prompted this change? General Pervez Musharraf’s regime had taken steps to help India calm Kashmir and there may have been an understanding in New Delhi that Mumbai, for all its atrociousness and gore, could be the work of an off-shoot of the Pakistani establishment and not an act carried not directly by the Pakistani state. Also, the Indian economy was on the fast track. An altogether new lifestyle had taken root in the country which a war, or even war-mongering, could jeopardise.

These two factors could well have contributed to determining the Indian response to Mumbai. But there was perhaps an even more significant reason. What was an Indian problem in December 2001 had now developed into an international concern. The US had itself been victim of a staggering terrorist strike and had all the more reasons, personal ones, to be sympathetic to a bustling, fast-progressing India with whom it had long craved close, strong ties. This in turn made India confident: its war was now a global war and India understood that it could rely on a very interested US to do its best to fight the threat of cross-border terrorism.

India shines as a model of pluralism in Rice’s book. She is impressed by the biggest democracy, which finds remarkable manifestations in the many Indian delegations to the US and in the Indian diaspora’s contribution to development in areas such as information technology. No Higher Honor carries numerous statements conveying the author’s appreciation of all things and people Indian — a logical follow-up on the empathetic bond she strikes with India right at the outset:

“On Thursday morning, September 13, 2001, I stood looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. How could this have happened?

Did we miss something?” Rice writes in the introduction to her book. A few paragraphs later, she says: “in 2008, toward the end of our time in office, a terrorist attack took place in Mumbai, India. I travelled to India to lend support to the Indian government and to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan… I came face to face with the Indian national security advisor… He, M. K. Narayanan, had the same shell-shocked look that I remembered seeing in the mirror after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

“I took his hands. ‘It is not your fault,’ I said.”

There are no marks for guessing where, in Dr Rice’s estimates, the fault lay.

One Pakistani who does get some respect from her is General Kayani whom she called on after she had met President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani post-Mumbai. “Finally, I went to meet the chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.

Our military liked him and considered him honest and effective. He was the one person who, even if he couldn’t accept responsibility, understood that Pakistan would have to give an accounting of what had happened.”

If this is a glimpse of how the US viewed the gap between Pakistani politicians and its generals, the preceding pages have President Bush having to make a tough choice over Musharraf and his declaration of emergency. While the American president was keen to not lose Musharraf, Rice could afford her reservations about the general. She says she thought he was done the moment he imposed emergency. But given her own observation of a 2005 meeting in the Army House in Rawalpindi, she had been “sympathetic” to Musharraf, even when she “didn’t care for much for people who lead military coups.”

The Pakistani climax to the book comes when President Bush and Dr Rice task themselves with organising an alliance between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, “the two strongest political forces in the country”.

The two came face to face in the United Arab Emirates in July 2007. That was a few months after, according to Rice, Musharraf had initiated the move for an alliance with Bhutto — at a time when he was struggling with his fight with the judiciary. Bhutto sought assurances: withdrawal of corruption cases, removal of the law that barred a person from a third term as prime minister, a guarantee that Musharraf will shed his military uniform before a general election. Musharraf was wary and the deal took time amid flurry of calls to and from the American secretary of state.

“As I shuttled from phone call to phone call, I asked myself again and again if I was doing the right thing. Power-sharing arrangements are fraught with difficulty because, in general, the parties don’t really want to share power.” Also, having fretted over the potentially fickle partners of the latest power-sharing deal in Pakistan, she chips in with the following line for the benefit of those wedded to the principles of rhetoric: “I was also concerned that I might be interfering in the democratic process.”

Might be?

The ‘also ran’ were defeated. The deal won in the name of democracy. Rice’s version supports the assertion that Benazir Bhutto did not commit herself to working with a general otherwise known as dictator. Since the resort of Pakistani parties to the US for arbitration is hardly an issue of debate here, the criticism of Bhutto and her party over the episode had to be based on corruption cases against her. This is how it turned out to be, primarily.

Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007. Musharraf was outmaneuvered by her widower, “a significant achievement” to Rice’s mind, “in no small part due to the [US] President’s persistent work with [Musharraf]”. President Zardari in turn is today fighting the same corruption charges his wife and their party had found momentary escape from. Rice’s Democratic successor, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has taken a much sterner tone in her dealings with a Pakistan that has since been found harbouring Osama bin Laden. There has been progress in Pakistan-India ties, aided by the line given by the US and by India’s replacement by the US as the country Pakistanis love to hate.

The reviewer is resident editor, Dawn, Lahore

No Higher Honour: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (MEMOIRS) By Condoleezza Rice Simon&Schuster, London ISBN 030758786X 784pp. Rs1,795